At Thy Pleasure Weave
by MrsTater
Summary: At thy pleasure weave that web of pain...A single act of comfort catches Daenerys and Jorah in a spider's web of consequences. [TV 'verse, AU from s1e2]
1. Love In the Eyes

_**A/N: If this seems familiar, you may have read it and the subsequent two chapters elsewhere as a series of one-shots. I've decided to turn this alternate universe into a proper multi-chapter fic and post here, finally. **_

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**1. Love In the Eyes**

"Khaleesi," said Jorah when the young woman suddenly ducked beneath the door flap of his tent. He started to push himself up from the sleeping mat on which he had been lying-not sleeping-but she gestured for him not to rise.

"Please, don't trouble yourself, ser," Daenerys mumbled.

Jorah obeyed-in part; he did not stand in the presence of the princess, but he did sit up, drawing one knee up and resting his forearm on it. He'd remained dressed in breeches and loose linen shirt in case of such a visit, which had become something of a habit of late. Though this was the first time Daenerys had come empty-handed, always previously accompanied by one or the other of the Westerosi books he gave her for a bride's gift, to ask him what he knew of the songs and histories beyond the words scratched long ago in now faded ink. He gazed up at her, the slight girl dressed in a sandsilk robe the color of leather with wide sleeves and a deep _v_ down the valley between her breasts, who cast a long shadow across the walls of his tent in the candlelight as she paced to and fro like an agitated animal in a cage.

"And do not call me _khaleesi_," she added, in harsher tones than he'd heard her utter before. "No one else does. They call me the Brooding Mare amongst themselves. A clever pun, I'll grant-though I think not so clever as me, for learning enough of the Dothraki tongue to understand them."

"So I've heard," Jorah replied, quietly, lowering his gaze to the mats of woven rushes that covered the earthen floor of the tent. "It is a cruel name, my princess, and I am sorry you had to hear it."

In fact, he had heard Daenerys called much worse, by her husband Khal Drogo and his bloodriders. The Broken Mare, who bore her rider in silence, not crying out in pleasure at his prowess as a lover, nor in pain at his dominance as her lord-either an acceptable response to a Dothraki man, who preferred more spirited mounts. And who had found them.

"Why should you apologize, Ser Jorah?"

He looked up at she halted in her tracks, turning to face him.

"You told me it would get easier," she said, "and it has-Khal Drogo has not come to me once these seven nights." Her lips twitched at the corners as she made a brave attempt at a smile, but ultimately her wide eyes betrayed her, glimmering brightly for a moment before they cast downward. She caught her full bottom lip between her teeth. "Though I am not such a child as to think that is what you meant."

"The painful aspect has not passed?" Immediately Jorah wished he had not asked as she lowered herself gingerly onto the cushions beside him, the shadows throwing into relief the twinge of her cheek muscle and the telltale bags of sleeplessness that hung beneath her eyes. But, idiotically, he kept talking, his callused fingertips scratching over his beard. "A moon has waxed and waned since you wed the _khal_."

Daenerys glanced at him, the tight smile again tugging at the edge of her mouth. "You have been married before, ser, have you not?"

He nodded. "Aye."

"Was a moon's turning the length of time required to make it easier for your wife?"

"Wives." Jorah studied his fingers as they picked at a threadbare place in the knee of his breeches. "The second was not a maid when I wed her, and the first was…" _Dutiful_, his mind supplied, but he found himself unwilling to speak of duty to Daenerys, who had been exactly that in her own marriage bed, and to no avail.

"Married to a husband who no doubt took care go see to her pleasure, as well as his own," she concluded the sentence for him.

_Dutifully_, Jorah thought again, though technically, he supposed, Daenerys was not incorrect.

"I had hoped Doreah would show you how to please yourself," he told her, "as well as Khal Drogo."

To his shame, Jorah felt a tightening in his breeches as his traitor imagination once again produced the pictures he previously failed to push away during the long lonely nights in this tent, of the princess and her handmaid, naked and entwined and writhing together at the tender ministrations of each other's sweet lips and fingers. He swallowed the hard knot in his throat, but got no relief there-or further below.

"But that is the trouble, don't you see?" Daenerys hugged her knees to her chest, her robe falling open above them to reveal perhaps a greater expanse of pale curved thigh than she meant for him to see. From which a more honorable knight than he would have averted his gaze. "I don't _want_ to please Khal Drogo, nor to be pleased by him. Not if he would rape and pillage and enslave and slaughter his way across my country, as he has done in these eastern lands."

As she spoke her voice pitched higher, but also grew stronger, a raw defiance present that made Jorah raise his head and meet her eyes. He read the misery in them as plainly as he read the stories on the pages of her books, but fire burned in the depths of them, too. Docile though she might be for her _khal_, Daenerys was no Broken Mare. Indeed, there might have been something of the Dragon in her, after all. More fire than her fool of a brother could claim flowed with the blood through his veins, at any rate.

"Fair enough, Princess," Jorah said, hoarsely, his throat constricted now with sadness at the thought of such a woman-a true beauty, as much within as without, despite the ugliness of her upbringing-being sold by a brother who did not love her to a man who could not-at least, not in the way desired to be-"but you would spare yourself a deal of pain at the hands of Khal Drogo _and_ Viserys if you would not deny yourself what pleasure you may find."

Daenerys sighed as she hunched over so that her cheek rested on her knee, her hair of spun silver falling over her face. "What does mere pleasure matter if I am denied love? Or does such a thing exist outside of songs and stories?"

"It exists, Daenerys." Without thinking Jorah stretched out his hand to stroke her hair back from her face, so that she might see the conviction of his words in his eyes. "More certainly than the gods."

She regarded him for a moment, so still and so silent, that his pulse raced beneath the thin skin at his wrist. Was she not uncomfortable with his touch? The heel of his hand lingered against her cheek as he wove his fingers through the silken strands. He started to withdraw, but Daenerys' small hands fluttered up to cover his, holding his palm to her face as she lifted her head. Her skin, he discovered, was still soft around the new calluses that have begun to harden after a month at the rein.

"Show me?" Her words were scarcely a whisper, little more than a breath against his hand, so that Jorah could not be certain he'd heard her correctly.

"What did you say?"

Daenerys' skin warmed beneath his touch as the fingers of a flush streaked upward from the low neckline of her robe into her neck and cheeks.

"Love comes in at the eyes, Doreah says. I know that the love I see in yours belongs to your wife…your wives…" For an instant her gaze faltered, but then she drew a breath and peered up at him again, shyly, through her lashes. "But you have been so kind to me, Jorah, my true friend…If you would give me but a glimpse…"

He would give her much more than that. Before he could think further, before he could question the wisdom of kissing Khal Drogo's wife-and the sister of the king he'd agreed to spy on-or consider the consequences that would likely follow such an action-for his own sake or the princess'-he sat up on his knees, leaned into her, and covered her mouth with his.

As her lips parted in an _O_ of surprise it occurred to him that this might be the first time Daenerys had been kissed, the Dothraki approach to the act of love being rather more to the point than the Westerosi. Jorah held back his own instinct to sweep his tongue into her warm, inviting mouth, and instead closed his lips and pressed them to hers almost chastely-an irony on which he chose not to dwell-allowing himself to savor what was for him, too, a first kiss of sorts-the first he'd known in far too long.

Cupping her face in both hands, his long fingers nearly spanned the length of it as his thumbs traced her delicate cheekbones. Daenerys made a small whimpering sound, almost a mewl, and when her hands curled around his wrists Jorah feared for a moment that his touch somehow displeased her, perhaps overwhelmed the young woman who came to him seeking comfort from so troubled a marriage bed. He started to remove his hands from her rounded cheeks, a reminder to him of her youth, lightening the kiss; before he could she released him, threading her arms between his on either side of her face, skimming his shoulders to twine about his neck, drawing her own body closer against his as her lips parted slightly. Though still restrained, he took it as an invitation to slip his tongue into her mouth, coaxing it further open by lightly tracing the edge of her lips with the tip, and Daenerys responded in kind, eliciting a low moan from him at the soft warm friction of her tongue sliding along his, eagerly exploring his mouth.

One of her hands strayed up to hold the back of his head, and her fingernails raked through the soft curling ends of his hair to scratch his scalp as she pulled him down to her. His knees began to ache as they pressed into the hard floor of the tent, so he shifted positions. He slid one hand down over her chin and neck and shoulder, unable to resist allowing the tips of his fingers to skim over her breast before they trailed down her hip and back over her arse, cupping it to draw her into his lap as he sat back on the ground. Daenerys locked the fingers of both hands together behind his neck as her legs fell on either side of him, her knees pressing into his sides as she leaned in to deepen the kiss even further.

Jorah, however, had other plans; he ignored her gasp of dismay as he broke the contact of their lips and tongues to dip his head and trail kisses along the line of her jaw and down her throat, which she exposed to him as her head fell back in the cradle of his hand. His thumb scuffed over her lower lip, and he felt the smooth hardness of her teeth when she bit down on her lip at the same moment as her belly twinged against his.

"Daenerys?" he asked huskily, raising his head from her neck-though he was reluctant to leave off kissing it-to look at her. But the concern that furrowed his brow eased as soon as he saw the laughter in her eyes, followed closely by the girlish sound of it as she could no longer bite it back.

"Your beard tickles," she said.

A lazy grin tugged at the corner of Jorah's mouth as he leaned in to nuzzle her neck, intentionally rubbing the scruff on his chin across her collarbones.

"Tickles, eh?" he asked, and she rewarded him with another ripple of laughter that set her to wriggling against the press of his hardened cock. "Shall I interrupt to shave it off?"

Her hands clutched the front of his shirt, holding him firmly in place, though he had no intention of really leaving her.

"I like it," she murmured in his ear, and Jorah was the one who squirmed as the heat of her breath made the hairs at the back of his neck stand. "_You_ are not ticklish, my knight?"

"I am too old for such silliness," he replied, teasingly gruff, though the whisper at the back of his mind was not a joke at all. Too old for _her_. Twice her age-and more.

Jorah brought his head up to kiss her again, as if to stifle the voice with his mouth though the words came not from Daenerys' lips. Her hands opened, the bunched fabric of his shirt damp where she clutched it so tightly between sweaty fingers, and her palms pressed flat against his chest. His hand left her neck, settling for a moment on the curve of her hip before he decided that the silk of her robe was too much of a barrier between them. Not bothering to untie the belt to preserve her modesty even as he touched her more boldly, he slid his fingers underneath one edge to rest his hand on her bare thigh.

So occupied was he with the glide of his palm and pads of his fingers over her smooth skin and the occasional accidental brush of his fingertips against the coarse hair that grows over her mound, that he did not immediately realize that she was pushing against him until she broke their kiss and he felt the tension in his abdomen and the burn of muscles burn as he instinctively leaned toward her to keep himself upright. For a heartbeat he gazed up at her, saw her silver hair blazing in the candlelight that poured over her shoulders-over her bare breasts, he noticed with widening eyes, the robe having slipped off her shoulders, the pink tips of her nipples peeping through the fair curling strands.

Supporting himself on one elbow, he reached out his other hand to curl over her breast, her supple nipple hardening as his thumb stroked over the tip. Her chest swelled beneath his hand with a shuddering indrawn breath. Again Jorah hesitated, but again before he could withdraw Daenerys clasped his hand to her breast as she leaned into him to capture his mouth, and at once it became plain to him that she meant him to lie back so she can mount him. A trick learned, no doubt, from her handmaid.

"Daenerys," he said into her kiss, a feeble attempt at a protest. She would not let him break it, her tongue plunging into his mouth, seeking his desperately, nor had he the heart to break it himself.

When she removed one of her hands from his chest and tugged, the whisper of silk as the belt pulled from around her waist and the garment started to slither down her arms prompted him to tear his mouth from hers, to sit up and catch the robe around her as it pooled about her elbows. When she looked at him, brows knitting together in confusion, he swallowed.

"Let me show you, Daenerys," he said, thickly. "You asked me to show you."

She asked him to show her love-or what he could of it. Desire, he could show her, undoubtedly; his hardened cock pressing the _V_ between her legs through his trousers provided ample evidence of that as he slid first one of her arms, then the other, out of the bell sleeves of her robe and watched as the silk slipped away to bare the rest of her to him. Though she spoke not of the lust of the eyes, but of his friendship, of which he is equally certain. What was the sum of friendship and desire, if not love?

Two wives Jorah had known, one who was his friend, the other whom he desired. Often he wondered if the one could have been a little more like the other, might both marriages have been more successful? Could it be that in Daenerys he would find all he sought?

He leaned her backward onto the floor, her robe a silken blanket against the scratchy rush mats, as he slid his legs out from under her. With his eyes he traced the pale outline of her figure against the dim backdrop of the tent, the rounded hills of her breasts and the sharper rises of her ribcage and the valley of her belly when she sucked in her breath as he slipped his leg over her hips to straddle her. His hands curled around her breasts, the hardened red peaks of her nipples like little flames against the inner edge of his thumb. Dragons were fire made flesh, Jorah had heard it said, and Daenerys' skin was so warm against his that he wondered if the same wasn't true of their masters the Targaryens themselves.

"You are so beautiful," he murmured, bending with the intent of bestowing soft kisses upon her breasts. As he did he caught her eyes and, seeing the pools of tears that shimmer in them, knew he was the first man to tell her so.

He kissed her lips again, briefly, feeling their upward curve against his; when he drew back she smiled, though the expression faltered when he kissed his way down her body, lingering so he could suck and tease her nipples with his tongue, and stopped at the sight of the even rows of faded green bruises down each of her sides, perfectly rounded and just the size of Khal Drogo's fingertips. Jorah had seen how the Dothraki men mounted their women, their hands gripping like iron as they pounded into them from behind.

"Not beautiful everywhere," Daenerys whispered, turning her face from his when he looked up at her sharply. The trail of a tear glimmered on her cheek in the candlelight.

"We all have scars," Jorah told her.

Still straddling her thighs, he sat fully upright on his knees and peeled off his shirt, discarding it to find her eyes raking over his chest and torso, curiosity mingled with-his heart missed a beat, even in the midst of this serious conversation-desire; she reached out with a tentative hand to trace her forefinger over a white line in his side where he took a knife fighting the Braavosi on the Rhoyne.

"But you earned yours in battle," she said.

"Life is a battle, Daenerys." He stretched over her again, his palms resting on the ground at either side of her shoulders, unable to stifle the low sound he made in his throat as the bare skin of his belly met hers and her fingers stroked the smattering of brown hair across his chest. Tenderly, he kissed the marks that marred her fair skin. "In time these bruises will fade."

"Make them fade, Jorah," she said, her hand between them moving lower, over the line of coarse hair that grew downward from his navel and disappeared into his breeches. "Make _him_ fade."

She brushed the bulge beneath his breeches, and when her fingers tugged at the laces he slid his left forearm beneath her shoulders to pillow her and balance himself as, with the other, he tugged his trousers down over his hips and buttocks, freeing his cock to brush against her thighs and the fair curls between them as he kicked free of the garment.

Before he attempted to enter her, he swept two fingers between her folds and found her wet; her eyelids fluttered at this intimate touch, and his gaze followed the roll of her throat with the moan that rippled out of it. Thinking her ready for him, he positioned the tip of his cock at her entrance, where his fingers had touched her, and pushed lightly against her. Instantly, Daenerys went rigid beneath him.

"Try and relax, my love," he murmured against her lips. "I'll go gently."

She sighed long into his mouth as he kissed her languidly, and he felt the tension seep out of her. Pleased as he was to take care with her, to give her what had been denied her on her wedding night, he was even more so that Daenerys did not merely lie beneath him, a passive recipient of his attentions; she returned his kisses as if she'd never enjoyed anything more. When she kissed him a little more intently, taking his chin in her hands and scratching her fingertips over the stubble of his beard, Jorah tried again to slip inside her.

This time, she did not flinch away, though he did find her tighter than he would have thought, for all she was wet and not a maid. He pulled his mouth from hers and kissed her earlobe, whispering to her as he did so. "Wrap your legs around me."

She heeded his instruction, crossing her ankles together so that her heel fitted into the small of his back. The opening of her hips created more room for him, and Jorah allowed a little more of his weight to rest on her as he pressed in a little deeper. But again her belly dipped inward, and her lips opened on his with a gasp.

"Forgive me, Daenerys. I don't wish to hurt you."

He tried to pull out but was met with resistance when her ankles locked tighter together at his back, holding him firmly in place; her heel, in fact, pushed him in deeper.

"Please, Jorah, don't stop. It's getting so much easier."

Whether it was hearing his own words spoken back to him and realizing that they meant so much more to her than he ever imagined they could, or, if he was honest, intended them to; or that the raw and complete trust in her voice as she spoke them was as arousing to him as the tight embrace of her thighs around him; or if he simply had always been more easily persuaded by his cock than by his head, he could not say. What he did know was that the next moment found him fully sheathed in her wet warmth, grunting with the effort of stopping himself from spilling into her at once because it had been so long since he'd lain with a woman he truly cared for. He battled past the urgency, as much for his own sake as for hers-though once he got control of his need, his concern was all for Daenerys.

She lay so still beneath him, fingers clutched around the taut muscles of his upper arms, neck bent so that she could look at their joined bodies. After a moment she smiled at him, half-shy at first, then tilting coyly as she lifted her hips up into his. Jorah groaned and rocked against her, his own lips curving as her lips parted into an _O_ when he touched that mysterious place deep within where a woman's pleasure lay. When he retreated she made a sound of protest, her hips again bucking upward to his. Though he at first grasped her hips, pushing her gently back toward the ground, he found that he hadn't the heart to tease, wanting to be nowhere but pressed as close as is possible to her, and dropped into her again.

Their tempo started out erratic as they learned each other's bodies and movements, but soon enough they fell into a rhythm. Daenerys' head fell back, and her arms splayed at her sides, her mouth open but her eyes shut. _Make them fade…Make him fade_. Jorah's eyes closed, too, as all the hurts of the past five years of lonely wanderings began to drift away on the ebb and flow of pleasure.

Yet it was the very thought of fading that brought the present into stark clarity before him. He was not now alone, but had found solace in another lost soul. He opened eyes to look upon her, his friend. His lover.

"Look at me, Daenerys," he panted, the words barely audible amid her moans as his thrusts carried her toward the brink.

She heard, though, and her lashes slowly parted. For the beat of a heart there was nothing but him, hovering, somewhere above her bright gaze.

"Love comes in at the eyes," Jorah said.

And together they fell.


	2. Bride's Cloak

**2. Bride's Cloak**

Some moments had passed since he shuddered and spilled into her, yet Jorah did not move apart from Daenerys. He'd loved her these seven nights, yet still he reveled in the sensations of being joined to her like this: of his cock, flaccid within the warmth of her wetness and his own sticky seed; of his heart, pounding within his chest cradled between her small breasts; of his face, buried in the curve of her neck, warmed by her skin and the heat of his own breath against it; of his lips, slightly chapped, trailing light kisses over her collarbone.

"Catching your breath so you can go once more, my bear?"

"No," he groaned more than answered as she slowly bucked her hips up against his. He pressed down into her in response, tempted by the suggestion, but the twinge in his manhood didn't last and his arm muscles twitched from their prolonged exertion. "No, love, I'm spent. I just…don't want you to have to leave."

With a sigh, Jorah slipped out of her and rolled onto his side. She must leave, regardless of what he wanted. Daenerys was his lover, but she was Khal Drogo's wife.

Even so, she tucked herself against him, her small hands splayed across the slackened muscles of his back as she embraced him, her knee threaded between his thighs. She pressed her mouth to the hollow of his throat, her tongue darting out to taste him, and said, "You would _sleep_ with me, as well as _sleep with me_."

"Aye."

Jorah wrapped his arms about Daenerys in turn, and his gaze drifted over her head to the door flap of his tent. His thoughts turned to his hall on Bear Island, to the great oaken door with its iron bolt and bar in the lord's bedchamber-not so much in fear of the flimsy barrier between them and the _kha_l's wrath should they be caught in this damning position, as because he simply wished he were home. That this woman was his wife, to have and to hold through the long nights. Or even the days, should he wish it.

"Khal Drogo never fell asleep with me on my sleeping silks," Daenerys says, "even before he tired of me. I think it is not the Dothraki way. " Her breath gently ruffled Jorah's chest hair. "But I think if I had a Westerosi husband to love me, and then to hold me as I slept, I should never have another nightmare again. Nor would I dream of the house with the red door, for I would always be home."

Blessing the silken silver of her hair with a kiss, Jorah did not voice the words that came to mind, that even in Westeros not all marriages were the blissful unions she described. She, better than any woman in the Seven Kingdoms, knew what it is to be sold for an alliance at the cost of her own happiness. And even he, with two marriages under his belt that no one would deem successes, was not yet totally jaded. He still believed such a marriage was possible.

Or would be…if Daenerys Targaryen were free to wed a husband of her own choosing.

Though it was folly to entertain such thoughts.

"What would our wedding have been like, Jorah?"

His back grew suddenly cold as her fingers left it, her palms resting instead against his chest. He forced himself to draw deep, slow breaths to steady his quickening heart.

"Such a thing could never be, Princess. I am too lowborn for you, even before my exile. A bannerman to a liege-lord who himself serves-"

Daenerys silenced him with a kiss. As her sweet tongue swept into his mouth, Jorah found himself pushed onto his back, the naked girl leaning over him so that her forearms rested upon his chest. The hardened peaks of her nipples pressed against his skin, and the curling ends of her unbraided hair tickled it.

"Just tell me about weddings in the Seven Kingdoms," she said.

Jorah swallowed, his throat rolling beneath her fingertips which rested lightly in the hollow. He could never deny her anything she asked of him with those wide shining eyes. They were the reason for his sleeping with the _khaleesi_ in the first place, appealing to him thus when she asked him to show her the love of which her husband deprived her.

"That depends on whether you're married in the North or the South," he said, "according to the rites of the Old Gods or the New."

As his voice rumbled in his chest, Jorah imagined that if anyone were to pass by the tent they would hear him speaking to her in much the same tones as those nights when she used to come to him for the sole purpose of discussing the books he gave her from their homeland. He tried to think of it as a history lesson now, lest his recounting of the marriage ceremonies performed in the septs turn his heart too much to when he uttered the seven promises and the seven vows to Lynesse.

"I suppose when you get past all the trappings," he concluded, covering Daenerys' hand where it rested on his chest, stroking her knuckles with his thumb, "Northern weddings aren't so different from Southron. Simpler-as everything is. The couple speak their vows before a heart tree instead of a septon, but the groom still places his cloak about his bride's shoulders, to symbolize the transference of protection from her father's House to her husband's."

"I think that's a lovely tradition," she said, sighing, and Jorah wondered if she compared it to the Dothraki marriage ceremony which she endured rather than enjoyed.

She smiled, though, and leaned in to kiss him again. He stretched up to meet her, but before he could do more than touch his lips to hers, she withdrew, pushing lightly off him to stand, and he was the one who sighed as she inevitably tiptoes nude across the floor of rush mats to retrieve her discarded clothing so she could go back to her own tent. Stretching out his arm, Jorah found his own things in a rumpled heap near the pallet of blankets, and as he sat up, tugging the yellow linen shirt over his head, wrinkled and perpetually smelling of sweat and horse, he tried to content himself with the memory of how eagerly Daenerys untied the laces to get it off him, her hands and lips exploring his body with as much delight as he enjoyed hers, Doreah's lessons for pleasing a man-and thus herself-not going to waste after all.

As his head emerged through the neck, however, he looked up to see that the princess has not donned her bedrobe after all. Instead, she stood before the crackling leather case in which he stored his armor and few meager belongings. Jorah's eyes swept over her shapely calves and thighs and the swell of her buttocks, the muscles harder as she grew fit from weeks in the saddle, the cinch of her waist, not quite obscured by the cascade of silver hair down her back, the curve of her breast which-it must have been the angle at which she stands-seemed fuller than usual. But while he appreciated his lover's form, even felt himself grow hard in response, what took his breath away was the garment she clutched in her hands.

Daenerys turned to him, unfurling his grey woolen cloak before her.

Not daring to think-or to hope-what meaning this might have in light of the preceding conversation, Jorah deflected with a jape. "Packing that showed little foresight on my part about the climate in the Dothraki Sea."

"But perhaps more than a little about what event might take place _here_." Her small bare feet just peeked from the hem of the cloak as she stepped nearer to him. "I want to wear your cloak, Jorah. Put it on me?"

His throat tied itself into a knot-of delight at the possibility she offered him, or of despair at what could never be-so that his voice came out too pinched to really convey the humorous tone he intended. "Don't you think that might make the nature of our relationship rather conspicuous, if you're seen in the _khalasar_ wearing my cloak?"

"Only you need see me wear it. Only you and the gods."

Her fingers released the heavy wool, leaving her fully exposed before him as the cloak pooled in his lap.

"Put it on me," she told him again, her voice a pleading whisper…or a dragon's command. "You've already made me your woman. Now make me your wife, as well."

It was exactly how she spoke when she asked him to show her what love was, and Jorah could not stop himself from pushing to his feet, cloak in hands, to stand before her.

But he hesitated, bunching the wool in his sweaty fingers. "We have neither septon nor heart tree…Daenerys, you have already spoken vows that bind you to another husband."

Her radiantly hopeful expression fell into a frown-no, almost a snarl. _Blood of the dragon_.

"Not vows," she said. "Only words spoken in a tongue I did not understand, for the ears of gods I do not know." Softening, she lifted her hand, uncurling her fist to brush the backs of her fingers across Jorah's cheek. "I would be wed in the eyes of the _true_ gods. The New or the Old, it makes no matter. Your gods shall be my gods."

"My god is love."

And, with scarcely another thought-except for the fleeting one that no bridegroom must ever have looked so absurd as he, clad only in a thin linen shirt that only just covered his arousal-Jorah moved to stand behind the princess and draped the drab plainspun wool over her slight shoulders. It should be velvet, he thought, dark green as the forests of Bear Island, trimmed with sable fur and emblazoned with his proud sigil. He brushed the thought aside as he gently pulled her impossibly long hair free from the neck of the cloak, the silver sheen making the garment look rich despite the simplicity of the cloth. In any case, it did not diminish what the ceremony signified; no king-certainly not her brother the Beggar King-nor _khal_ could afford her more protection than he would give her.

He chose to ignore the irony that to be discovered at this moment would mean Daenerys' certain death, as well as his own.

The cloak-and his hands-resting securely on her shoulders, she turned beneath his touch, and Jorah bent to incline his head toward her upturned face.

"With this kiss," she said, in a voice as low and steady a voice as ever he'd heard her speak, "I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband."

"With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife."

The folds of the cloak slipped back over her shoulders as she raised her arms to twine them about Jorah's neck, drawing her exposed bare breasts against the open neck of his shirt, pressing her hips into his arousal. One of his arms wrapped around her waist, while the other hand slipped beneath her arse, his fingers squeezing as he hoisted her off the ground. A show of affection which would be inappropriate if he wed her in the Great Sept of Baelor, where by all rights a Targaryen princess should have been married, but which nevertheless felt so natural, and right to him that, with his eyes closed and the cool night air coming in through the gaps beneath the tent flaps, he could almost believe they stood before the heart tree back home.

Between kisses, he said, "I do solemnly proclaim Jorah of House Mormont and Daenerys of House Targyren to be man and wife. One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever. And cursed be the one who comes between us."

_Even Khal Drogo_, he thought, claiming her mouth once more, her teeth raking his lower lip as he swept his tongue inside. _I am hers and she is mine._

But when she pulled her lips from his, one of her hands leaving his neck to push gently against his chest, he groaned, remembering that she was only his within this tent. Already she had been here too long…

Reluctantly, he lowered her to the floor, only for her hands to grasp at the hem of his shirt, tugging it upward as she simultaneously pulled him toward the pile of blankets on the floor, stumbling a little over the trailing hem of his overlarge cloak.

"Take your bride to bed, husband."

Jorah lost no time stripping off his shirt, though when she started to remove his cloak, he stayed her hands.

For as long as she was here with him, he would have every reminder that she was his.


	3. The Best-Kept Secrets

**3. The Best-Kept Secrets**

If he must be fool enough to engage in an illicit romance-a secret marriage-Jorah mused as he lifted Daenerys up into her saddle at the start of another day's ride, at least he had the good sense to do so with a woman with whom he regularly came into physical contact.

The horde_, _her _khas_, her handmaids, even her husband were all so accustomed to Jorah's presence at the _khaleesi'_s side as to expect it; his absence, in fact, would draw more attention to the fact that something had changed between them. So he allowed himself the luxury of letting his hands linger a little longer on her waist than was strictly necessary for helping her mount, his fingertips brushing the expanse of bare skin between her riding leathers and horsehair vest. Her abdomen, he noted, was not only tanned from her twomonth beneath the cloudless open skies of the Dothraki Sea, but taut, strengthened by riding.

Jorah swung up onto his own horse, unable to prevent his lips curving in a slight smile at his intimate knowledge of Daenerys' body, as well as at his good fortune-this knowledge did not come at the cost of working out her mysteries _only_ under cover of darkness; by the light of day they continued as ever they had: constant companions, _friends_. More like man and wife than either lady to whom Jorah pledged his troth before a score of witnesses under the dome of a sept or the sprawling branches of a heart tree.

His grin stretched as Daenerys' little silver mare swerved close alongside Jorah's big bay, as she was wont to do, so that their legs touched. Glancing downward, he studied Daenerys knee, bent at a comfortable angle as her foot rested in its stirrup. Supple leather leggings clung to her like a second skin, and for a moment he savored the secret that he had kissed that knee, tasted the hollows beneath the delicate jut of the cap, nuzzled at the ticklish underside until he had to clap his hand over her mouth lest her peals of girlish laughter give them away. That knee had dug into his side as she pushed him onto his back and mounted him, riding him with the same newfound confidence and grace that she possessed in the saddle, the lessons her handmaid gave her in the art of pleasuring a man not going to waste even though Daenerys never tested her mastery of the techniques on her _khal_.

At the tightening in his breeches Jorah averted his gaze, settling it instead on Daenerys' face. The sight of her unlined young forehead furrowed deeply wiped the smile from his face and restored his manhood to a state less likely to betray their secrets.

"Princess?"

He addressed her thus for the sake of their ruse, though more often than not Jorah spoke the title not as a formality but as an endearment: _my _princess, murmured as he covered her slender body with his own and pressed his cock deep into her tight wet folds.

"Does something trouble you?" he asked, his voice husky as his traitor mind turned his body against all previous efforts at restraint, his arousal strangely heightened by the way Daenerys' drawn features relaxed, as if she drew a measure of comfort from his mere presence.

"Not _troubles_, per say," she began. "My sleep was much interrupted by thoughts."

"By _thoughts_?" Jorah teased, and this time when their horses came near enough together that his leg brushed against hers, it was intentional.

Daenerys blushed prettily, and then glanced away, a secret smile on her lips. But fine lines lingered about her eyes, along with shadows beneath them. Their nightly trysts _did_ cost her sleep, he knew. Perhaps they should meet less frequently-though the idea of giving up any more of those precious private hours when already circumstances forced them to sleep apart made his belly knot.

"Thoughts of what?" he asked.

"My mother." Daenerys held the reins slack in one hand, the other arm wrapped around her middle, absently stroking her own skin. "How I never knew her. How I don't know what she was like…Or whether I am anything at all like her."

"I have no doubt you must be," said Jorah, wishing he were at liberty to offer her a more comforting touch than another brush against her leg. "It was at Queen Rhaella's knee that your brother Rhaegar learned to play the harp and sing. She had a gentle heart, they said."

He gave her a small smile, which she returned-albeit sadly, and looking so impossibly young. As she looked the first day he set eyes on her, at her wedding to Khal Drogo.

"Daenerys…" Jorah's lips and tongue formed the syllables of her name deliberately, almost caressing them. "I hope you do not seek to know your kin because you believe it will help you to know yourself. Though the little I've heard of your mother is that she was a good queen, and a good woman…"

_Who, like her daughter, suffered in her marriage bed_. The leather reins cut off the circulation to his fingers as he twisted them around in his fist.

"Even if she were as mad or as cruel as your father was purported to be, that is not who _you_ are destined to be. You always have your own choices. As Rhaegar did."

_Choices that spun into a spider's web that ensnared the whole of the realm and brought his untimely demise. And that of his family entire. _

Yet by some miracle Daenerys had been spared. Could she really understand the significance of that? Viserys did not, his foolishness-or madness-putting them in the path of death. How long could they survive in a Dothraki _khalasar_? How long before Drogo lost patience with Viserys' tantrums? Before he asserted himself once more over the timid wife his people scorned as his _broken mare_?

"You were a small boy when your mother died," Daenerys' words, though softly spoken, jolted Jorah from his thoughts.

He looked down at her from his mount, her brows knit together in an expression that bespoke some uncertainty as to how his last remark to her was pertinent to the conversation, and a total ignorance of the dark turn his brooding had taken. In truth he was relieved to see her so, to return to this bright morning where they were, for the time being, safe, the wounds that marred it old ones which had faded with time.

"I'd scarcely reached my fourth name day," he replied.

"Old enough to remember her."

Jorah noded as his throat constricted so that he could only say quietly, "As the years pass, there are times when I fear I begin to forget her face."

"Then you understand what a treasure even a faded memory is. I don't envy you the pain of losing your mother, Jorah, but I do wish I had something of mine to hold, even a trinket that belonged to her. But I have nothing. Viserys sold everything to put bread in our bellies, and I find I no longer trust the tales he tells."

"I know a tale about Queen Rhaella," Jorah blurted out before he could think about where this story was leading, moved, as always, by the longing in Daenerys' wide, beautiful eyes. They shined up at him with such hungry interest that he could not possibly deny her request any more than he could if she were a beggar child in the streets. "When she was but a maid, and your grandfather Jaehaerys sat the Iron Throne, rumor had it that your mother loved a knight."

Daenerys sat up a little straighter in her saddle, her hand falling away from her stomach to clutch the reins. "What was his name?"

"I've forgotten." Or Lynesse never told him, when she gave him the tale, though as she'd done so whilst they lay entwined in each other's arms during the sailing from Lannisport to Bear Island, the more likely truth was that he as lucky to remember any part of it at all. "He was not well-born. Nevertheless, Princess Rhaella gave him her favor in a tourney, and the knight won the day and crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty."

Jorah's heart twinged as if fingers curled around it and closed into a fist as the story hit too close to the mark. Had Rhaella's knight been a better fighter in his own right than his low birth should by all rights account for? Or had he, too, been spurred to greatness by the promise of a lady's love?

"But they were not permitted to marry," Daenerys said, and Jorah blinked and saw that she had wheeled her horse around to face him where he realized _he _had also reined to a halt, the horde riding on around them.

"No, my princess."

Even Jorah, drunk on love and wine, had been surprised when Lord Leyton Hightower consented to a match between a newly-knighted and poor Mormont of Bear Island to his daughter-and she was not a Targaryen princess like Rhaella. Or Daenerys. Not one moon's turn ago he'd told her as much: that if _they _met under different circumstances than these, in their own country, and loved, they, too, would have been kept apart.

Daenerys held his gaze as she said, "I suppose my mother and her knight were never together again after she wed my father? They did not love in secret? Or marry in their hearts?"

Jorah's mouth opened, but any words of answer lodged painfully in his throat.

"Of course not." Viserys' drawl turned both their heads to see his horse plodding toward them. "Though obviously the story is nothing but the most vile of lies. Do you really think, little sister, that a Targaryen princess would so debase the blood of the dragon?" He addressed Daenerys, but his eyes were on Jorah as he added, "And if she did, don't you know the dragon would burn the traitor knight…along with the adulterous little whore?"

* * *

He kissed her harder, raking his teeth over her swollen lower lip before sweeping his tongue deep into her mouth. Her own curled around it, rubbing with a warm friction that made him harden again inside her, filling the tightening space as she contracted around him. _There _was the edge-she crossed her ankles at the small of his back, the tendons of her thighs clutching taut against his hips, and her small hands splayed across his buttocks to pull him in deeper even as he thrust into her full tilt-and _at last _he thought he would slip over into blissful release.

However, when Daenerys uttered his name, as a secret meant only for his ears or as an impassioned scream, he could not say which, inviting him with her, Jorah faltered.

She made a whimper of frustration her breasts, sticky with sweat, shrank back from his chest with her exhalation of breath. Then she removed one hand from his arse and pushed it between their hips to grasp the base of his cock where it met her mound in a mass of tangled coarse hairs-not for the first time all night. _Was_ it yet night? Jorah raised his head, turning away from her move to kiss him again, and blinked at the dim light that penetrated the woven walls of his tent. He could not be sure whether it was from the dying campfires, or dawn, but either possibility made him certain that Daenerys would not rekindle his ardor now.

Nor should he have succumbed to her in the first place. This night, or on the one weeks ago.

"It's no use," he said, pushing off her with a sigh and rocking back on his haunches to search in the dark for his clothes, discarded somewhere among Daenerys' robe and the pile of blankets upon which they lay.

"It's all right," she said, the silhouette of her sitting up on her elbows just visible against the tent wall. Jorah pulled his shirt over his head to hide the advantageous angle of her breasts and the memory it stirred of how they felt fuller as he cupped them in his hands.

"No." Emerging from the neck of his shirt, he steadfastly avoided her gaze, even though the light was too poor in his quarters to see her face-which, thankfully, meant she couldn't see his, either, flushed and scowling in mortification at being unmanned before her, though surely she must hear it the clipped syllables in which he spoke-and sits back to pull on his breeches. "This is folly."

"I don't mind," she insisted. "These things happen…I think… " She stumbled over her words, and Jorah imagined the hot color that must tinge her neck and cheeks. Bravely, she reached out a hand, the tips of her fingers brushing his knee, but he flinched back from her as he shifted to tug his trousers up over his hips and do up the laces. "Certainly it isn't _folly_. You can't help-"

"-but give in to my desires even when I know the wiser course would be to flee temptation? Believe me, Daenerys, I am well aware that such was my downfall in the past. But I must not allow it to be yours as well. I _will _not._"_

He found her silken robe tangled around his tunic on the floor and thrust it at her, but Daenerys sat unmoving as stone, watching him in the dark.

At length, she asked, "Is this about what Viserys said today? Surely you do not fear _him_."

Jorah snorted. "That snake?"

"Not even a snake. More like a worm."

"Aye." Though Jorah's mouth tilted upward at the corner, but the truth, however, was no jape, and the smirk fell as he went on, quietly, "But I'd have to be the greatest fool that ever lived not to fear your horse lord husband."

Her eyes caught the orange light that shined through a crack in the door flap, for a moment blazing with a fire which her brother, who fancied himself blood of the dragon, would envy. "_You _are my husband."

As she lunged toward him, Jorah's heart leapt in his chest, ever willing to be consumed by her, _for_ her, but he held her off with a firm hand on her bare shoulder. "Not in any way that matters."

"In _every_ way that matters! The _only_ way-"

He kissed her-to silence her, passion pitching her voice too high and too loud-and when he drew back she was quite breathless as he wrapped her robe around her and swept her disheveled hair free from the collar.

"And if that is true, surely you cannot imagine that I would place you in a position to be further hurt-or killed? I placed my cloak about your shoulders to symbolize my protection over you, yet every night I allow you to join me in my bed places you directly in the way of danger."

"_Allow me?_" The whistle of silk on skin accompanied Daenerys slipping her arms into the sleeves of her robe and belting it closed around her slight figure. "Who is the princess, and who is the knight? I think you forget, ser."

"I? No, _Princess_."

He placed the same weight on her title as she did on his, though he had not the heart for mockery; on the contrary, he fought the tug of a most inappropriate smile at this evidence that Daenerys was not the same timid girl who begged him to love her as her husband did not-though the very thought instantly extinguished the flicker of happiness.

"You asked me to make you forget Drogo. Clearly a mistake, if doing so makes you disregard that the most fearsome _khal _in the world won't take kindly to being made a cuckold."

"Oh Jorah." With another rustle she stood, bending slightly to brush her thumb across his cheekbone as her palm opened, the scratch of his beard against her skin just audible beneath her soft words. "You made me forget what it is to be afraid and unloved. If your protection means I must go back to that existence, then…I don't want it."

In spite of himself, Jorah leaned into the cool gentle touch of her palm, knowing full well that already she was burning his resolve away to ash, just as Lynesse had when he let her persuade him to flee Bear Island rather than stand like a Mormont and face his liege-lord's justice. _Our love will be enough._

He clenched his teeth together and ground out, "Daenerys I am a _knight_, gods damn it! I am sworn to protect the-"

"Do not say I am weak!"

She straightened to full height, the moonlight that beamed in through the top of the tent casting her pale hair and fair skin in a silvery light that made her look diamond hard.

"The only oath you've sworn to me is that of a husband, and it said nothing about making my choices for me. You said I had a choice, Jorah, just like my mother. Well-what if she'd made a different one? What if she loved her knight in secret? And married him in the eyes of the god of love? And what if…"

She tugged at the belt of her robe, turning to the side as it fell open to reveal the soft rounding of her belly, which Jorah's eyes widened to behold.

"What if," she whispered, lifting her gaze to meet his as she traced the tip of one finger over the slight bulge, "she carried his child?"


	4. Protection

**4. Protection**

Moonlight slanted through the openings in the top of the tent, illuminating silvery hair and pale skin as Daenerys opened her sandsilk robe to reveal the swell of her belly. From Jorah's vantage point looking down on her, the bulge appeared so slight that she might as easily have overeaten as conceived his child; but Daenerys had little taste for the unvarying Dothraki diet of dried horse meat and flat bread, and in any case she had never spoken to him with greater certainty than when she compared their affair to that of her mother Queen Rhaella's ill-fated love for the lowly knight who begged her favor in a tourney. Ser Bonifer Hasty, the name leapt suddenly into his mind.

_"What if my mother loved her knight in secret and married him in the eyes of the god of love? What if she carried his child?"_

Pregnant.

Daenerys of House Targaryen, pregnant by a man who was not her husband the great Khal Drogo.

The Blood of the Dragon pregnant by Ser Jorah Mormont, formerly Lord of Bear Island, now exiled across the Narrow Sea for selling poachers into slavery to pay his former lady wife's expenses.

It was so preposterous as to be laughable-more preposterous, even, than a poor lord winning the hand and heart of a highborn girl half his age-and Jorah did laugh, though he tried to contain it behind the hand he pressed to his mouth, the stubble of his beard scratching his the callused backs of his fingers. A mad laugh, a bitter puff that caught in his throat.

"You…" he choked out. "You must get rid of it!"

Daenerys blinked wide eyes at him. "The child?"

The muscles beneath his cheekbone flexed as he ground his teeth together. In her bed, he had forgotten how young she was, how little she knew about love, all her knowledge of the physical act gleaned from her handmaid whose only thought was to teach her how to please a Dothraki _khal_, and from himself, who only wanted to make her feel cherished and safe.

"There are herbs," Jorah told her. "Potions that induce miscarriage."

And if he'd truly had her safety in mind, he would have thought to see to it that she knew about them. Or prevented her need of them in the first place.

"_Induce_ miscarriage?" Her voice pitched high and hoarse, as if with physical pain along with unbelief. "Surely you cannot mean…" She wrapped her arms protectively around herself, drawing her bed robe closed over her rounded belly and breasts. "Take the life of my own child?"

And then, abruptly, her face changed from aghast to authoritative and she rolled her shoulders back, stood straight, caught his gaze and held it.

"If you think I could do such a thing, ser, then you are sadly mistaken. Could you? My bear-your own lady wife _died_ trying to give you an heir!"

"An heir to what? I'm an exile lord with no lands and no money, you're an exile princess sold to another man by the Beggar King. What have we to give a child, Daenerys?" Jorah stepped toward her, flinging his open palms out. "Do you truly imagine this story can end happily, like the ones in your bloody books?"

"The books _you _gave to me!"

"For your wedding to Khal Drogo!"

In the silence that followed, Jorah realized that the volume of their discussion had risen to a shouting match. Even their breathing, chests rising and falling rapidly, seemed loud to him, and he caught his as his eyes snapped to the tent flap. For a moment he watched, and listened, cursing himself when his hand went instinctively to his hip and he found that his sword did not hang at his customary place. He had let his guard down. Though after a moment he decided that the muted din outside the skin walls of his tent was only that of the usual activity of a Dothraki encampment, he retrieved his sword belt, turning his back to Daenerys as he buckled it around his waist. The familiar weight of the weapon at his side at once steadied him, and he breathed again.

"It may not be mine," he said, his voice once more low and steady. "There is a chance…It has not been so long since Khal Drogo…"

He tried to work out the sum of nights passed with her in this tent since first she came to him, but before he could Daenerys interrupted.

"It is _not_ Khal Drogo's!" she snarled.

Never had she spoken so before, nor had she looked so, either, Jorah found, the tone compelling him to turn and face her, teeth bared, eyes aflame. Ferocious.

"The babe in my belly is the child of _our_ love. We made it, Jorah. You and I."

She'd come to stand in front of him as she spoke, almost toe-to-toe; the press of her fingernails into the back of his hand made him realize she'd taken it, and placed it against her belly. Her touch cut, burned, and so did her words; Jorah wanted to pull away and block his ears but he could not. They were the words he'd wanted to hear from Erena: he'd made a child by her-three children-but not in love. And they had not lived.

"All my life I've had nothing, until you loved me. And then I had everything. That is what our child shall be heir to. Not to a kingdom or even an island, but to _love_."

And _those_, gods be good, were the words he'd longed to hear from Lynesse. No man loved his wife as he had her; but love had not been everything to her, or even enough.

Daenerys' hand drew his upward over the line of her body, his fingers uncurling against his better judgment to caress her breast. She pressed his palm there, over the curve of her breast, beneath which he felt his hand to touch his cheek, his beard rasping against the smooth backs of her fingertips. He leaned into her then, but as she drew his head down, her own face uptilted for a kiss, he knew that if he went back to her, he was lost.

He stepped out of her embrace.

"Khal Drogo must never know that another man may be the father." He spoke deliberately, tugging at the hem of his shirt, then at his sword belt. "If he so much as suspects, it will mean certain death-for me, for you, for the child."

"Then we must flee."

A bitter smile twitched at the corner of Jorah's mouth. He had heard those words before.

"Do you think if I stole away the wife of the _khal_, I could escape his reach?"

No more than he had escaped the hand of justice, he thought; he might well have taken the Black, for all he had lost his lands and his lady.

"I am _not_ Khal Drogo's wife," Daenerys asserted again, as she had earlier in the night, when he'd tried to put an end to this before he even knew she was with child, the fire crackling once more in her eyes. "I am yours."

She moved toward him, arms outstretched as though to embrace him, but Jorah caught her shoulders, her slight build allowing him to easily hold her at arms' length.

"It was a game, my love." The endearment slipped out before he could think to stop it. "Like children playing at house. A most foolish, dangerous game, which we can never hope to win."

He released her and strode to the door flap of the tent, drawing it back to peer out into the darkness of the Dothraki camp and ascertain whether anyone was nearby to see the _khaleesi _in this compromising position. All seemed safe.

"Go now. You must leave this tent, and never set foot inside again."

Daenerys obeyed, but as she slipped past, Jorah saw her draw in on herself, shoulders hunched. As she had been when she entered this tent weeks ago and asked him to show her love.

If he had done that, it was not enough. Not everything. Along with his love had come pain, inflicted more deeply upon her heart than any dealt to her body by Khal Drogo.

* * *

"Mormont."

"Your grace," said Jorah through his teeth, not turning as Viserys rode his mount alongside his-not without some difficulty, yet unaccustomed to the flat Dothraki saddles and short stirrups.

"Not riding with my sweet sister today, I see?"

If the Mad King's heir truly saw as clearly as he believed he did, then he would have noticed that Jorah had not ridden with Daenerys the past _three_ days.

"And I thought you'd wormed your way into her…what's the savages' word for her little retinue again?"

Viserys Targaryen might not know much about the Dothraki tongue, but he did know about worms, didn't he?

"_Khas, _your grace," Jorah replied. He had found that styling Viserys with all due respect the rank left less of a bitter taste in his mouth when in his thoughts he granted the respect actually due the person: by _grace_, he meant _shit_, and he made sure to say it as often as he could. Today, though, he derived no pleasure from such petty rebellions. "Short for _khasar._ It's less a retinue than a personal guard."

"I didn't ask for an entire language lesson, Mormont," Viserys snapped, but then his lips twitched into a smirk. "Though I'm glad to see you demonstrate a good working knowledge of it-especially after our little chat the other day. My sister's husband has so generously provided her with a _khas_." He did not pronounce the word with great confidence. "It's hardly necessary for her to be accompanied by _my _sworn sword, as well."

"Indeed, your grace."

"How does a minor Westerosi lord become fluent in Dothraki, anyway?"

Jorah exhaled heavily, rolling his eyes heavenward as he considered the briefest answer possible that would shut Viserys up. Was it his lot in life always to be the butt of the gods' sense of irony? Before the interruption, he'd been musing on how lonely it felt to ride alone, when for the past two moonshe'd ridden at Daenerys' side. He'd kept out of her way since he sent her from his tent, and her fool of a brother was actually deluded enough to believe _he _had intimidated Jorah into doing so.

"Why, by staying alive long enough to have a conversation with them, your grace."

He gave his stallion his heels to urge the animal on ahead of Viserys, ignoring the younger man's insistence that he return at once. Jorah preferred loneliness to company if Viserys' was the only alternative; it Jorah his stomach to think he'd bent the knee and sworn fealty to this cretin who styled himself King even if he had done so only to betray him.

The intensity of his loneliness following the beak with Daenerys had come as something of a surprise. After all, in the years since he left Lys without his wife-and even during his time there with her, when he had been sellswording to keep her-he'd grown accustomed to solitude. It wasn't the three nights he'd tossed and turned, not having found his release in Daenerys before lying down to sleep alone-not entirely, anyway-not the loss only of his lover, but of the first friend he'd had in all the long years since he'd fled Bear Island.

But he _must_ give her up. If he loved her, he must keep her safe. She would not be safe if anyone suspected that his interest in her was more a knight's should be for the sister of the man he outwardly called king, and the wife of the _khal_ who, for some reason Jorah did not quite understand, held him in something akin to regard.

Lost in thought, he had also lost awareness of where and how quickly his mount carried him there until he looked up and saw the familiar tall figure of Rakharo astride his mount up ahead.

Jorah reined in to fall back down the line of riders, leaning forward to pat the bay's neck and mutter, "Seems I'm not the only one accustomed to being a part of the princess'retinue, eh, boy?"

As he rose upright in his saddle, he saw that Rakharo had come to a halt to the side of the trail, Jhogo and Aggo with him, their youthful faces etched vaguely with discomfort as their dark eyes scanned the passing riders. The back of Jorah's neck prickled as, in spite of himself, he glanced around for the _khalessi _the warriors were meant to be guarding. He spied Irri holding the reins of two little mares who bore no riders, her own and the little silver that had been Khal Drogo's bride gift to Daenerys; he looked too long and the slave girl caught his eye.

"Jadi, zhey Jorah Andahli!" she called to him, and he went to her without hesitation, though he did not immediately speak, measuring the concern with which he inquired after Daenerys. This an unnecessary worry, as the outspoken Irri answered him while the question remained unspoken. "Khaleesi qwehae."

"Khaleesi _vos _qwehao," argued Doreah, the direction of whose voice Jorah followed a few yards from _khas _to find her kneeling in the tall grass. But his relief at the rebuttal of Irri's claim that Daenerys was vomiting proved short-lived as he saw her bent over a scrubby bush, the handmaid holding her silvery braid out of the way as she gagged and heaved.

Doreah turned her eyes up to Jorah and explained in the Common Tongue of Westeros, "The princess is ill, but she brought everything up yesterday. We have offered her flatbread, horse meat, goat-"

"-and dog," Irri added, brows drawn together sharply in an expression of annoyance that she had been pushed out of the conversation.

"The khaleesidoesn't want to eat dog," Doreah snapped at her.

"Has she drunk?" Jorah interrupted the girls' bickering.

He swung down from his mount and brushed Doreah aside to take her place crouching beside Daenerys. She scarcely acknowledged him , until he offered his waterskin, and murmured, "You need water, my princess," and then she darted him a glance that made him remember he'd told her this before, in her early days as Khal Drogo's bride. When she had been too sad and scared to look to her own survival in the _khalasar_. He swallowed, his own throat dry and aching.

So she was back at the start. And he was to blame for it.

He spoke her name low and touched the tips of her fingers where they rested on the ground, and pressed the waterskin into it. She trembled, weak from lack of nourishment and the day's ride under the relentless sun, and Jorah helped her bring the skin to her lips. She took small sips at first then, when the water stayed down, reviving her, clutched the bottle with a claw-like grip, gulping it down thirstily. When she had emptied the skin, Jorah sent Doreah to refill it, and he took a sprig of mint from the pouch at his belt and gave it to her to chew and take away the bilious taste.

Unfortunately thathad quite the opposite effect, the mint's aroma sickening her before she could even put it in her mouth, and Daenerys doubled over the bush again. She heaved long after her stomach was emptied of the water, choking up mucous, until she curled on the ground, heedless of dirt on her face and bits of grass and burrs catching in her disheveled hair, though when Doreah returned with water she picked them out and wiped her brow with a rag.

Rakharo asked if he should ride to tell Khal Drogo the _khaleesi _needed the horde to stop and make camp.

Before Jorah could respond, Daenerys pushed herself into a sitting position and said, "No." Her voice contained more conviction than Jorah would have imagined her capable of in her weakened state, and she squeezed his hand hard to push to her feet. "No, I can ride."

She kept hold of his hand, leaning into him as she walked unsteadily back to her silver, and required his assistance up into the saddle. As his hands settled onto her waist to lift her onto the mare's back, Jorah cast a sidelong glance to see whether her Dothraki were watching; their faces were blank, and he realized that he had helped her thus in the past, dozens of times, and that _not _to do so now would arouse more suspicion about their degree of intimacy than if he did. They would know there had been a quarrel, and would wonder why. At least, as he resumed his customary place riding alongside her for the duration of the day's ride, her illness rather than estrangement seemed the most likely cause for the lapse in their previously continual conversation.

For all her earlier bravery, though, by the time the horde came to a halt and the slaves scurried to set up camp, Daenerys slumped on her silver's back, her thin pale hands slackened around the reins. She trembled so that she surely would have fallen from the saddle if Jorah had not there to catch her. He did not bother to ask if she could walk, even supported by his arm about her waist, but cradled her in his arms, heedless of Viserys' spluttering as he caught up to them or the watchful dark eyes of her _khas_, and ducked beneath the door flap of the tent the men just finished erecting for her and lay her gently down upon her sleeping silks.

"Jorah, please," she said, reaching for him as he straightened up, but her hand fell short of him onto her coverlet, and she did not finish the thought before exhaustion claimed her.

She used the pleading tone with which she had begged him to love her, which he possessed not the strength to deny. He stood over her, contemplating her sleeping form in the candlelight, and knew she needed him now more than ever, and that he could not abandon her. It was the vow he'd pledged to her, when he placed his cloak about her shoulders in the traditional symbol of her coming under his protection. Ironically.

He was about to lean down and sweep a lock of hair from her perspiring brow and kiss her when the tent flap pulled back and her handmaids entered. He acknowledged them, then went out into the night, glittering with starlight and hundreds of cook fires, and found his bay.

No, he could abandon her, he thought, mounting up again. But in order to help her, he would have to leave her, for a little while.

"Jorah Andahli!" Rakharo called to him from the fire where he sat with the two other members of the _khas_, and inquired where he was riding.

"To Qohor," Jorah replied, and galloped away toward the slice of orange setting sun in the west.

* * *

The woman in the herb stall measured Jorah with blue eyes that glittered above a hawk nose and beneath heavy white brows. For a moment she tolerated him as he wordlessly scanned the rows of shelves behind her, filled with bottles and clay bowls containing oils and unguents and powders and leaves, then she asked, her halting Common laced as heavily withimpatience as with the Qohorik burr, "You come to see? Or to buy?"

"To buy," Jorah replied in her own dialect, and the herbalist heaved a sigh of relief-though more likely because she was to earn coin than because she was to hear her native tongue while doing so.

"And what will you buy, my Westerosi friend?" She was all charm now, a consummate saleswoman, turning with a sweep of her hand to indicate the shelves-Jorah noticed that the tips of her fingers were stained with plant juices. "You study my wares as though you know your herbs."

Jorah glanced at the shelves, then back at her. "I know what they can do."

"Whatever you want them to do. Or need them to do."

The bastard Valyrian spoken in Qohor, like all the dialects spoken in the Free Cities, dripped liquid from the herbalist's tongue, though the impression it had on Jorah's ears was slow and dark as pitch. Or perhaps it was his own conscience that made him feel mired in the implication of her words.

"You have tansy, I trust?" he asked.

"_Tschk__!_ What kind of herbalist would I be if I did not have tansy? Not the kind you wish to make your moon tea." The blue eyes glinted and one of the angled brows slanted high on her forehead. "It _is _moon tea you want your tansy for, isn't it? Or _need _it for?"

_"Take the life of my own child? If you think I could do such a thing, ser, then you are sadly mistaken. Could you?"_

Folding his arms across his chest, he rubbed his fingers over his stubbled jawline. "Well I don't know. I have it on good authority moon tea isn't wholly reliable."

"Whose authority?"

"My aunt who has five daughters despite consuming it regularly."

Though it had seemed to work perfectly for Lynesse. Unless she had resorted to alternative means; there were other ways, though he did not know them, to bring a pregnancy to its premature end. The Dothraki birthing women knew, surely, but of course he could not ask them, lest he arouse suspicion as to why the Andal, who was not known to be in the company of other women than the _khaleesi _and her handmaids, should require such things.

"An especially fertile woman might perhaps be better served by soapwort or cyperus. White and black hellebore do the job nicely, or pennyroyal."

It hadto be Jorah's imagination that her accent placed a slight emphasis on the last syllable of _pennyroyal_. The woman was an herbalist, not a witch.

"Finally there is worm fern-more commonly called _prostitute's root_. Though that is generally in ready supply at the brothels."

"There is no brothel in question," Jorah growled at her, at once wishing he had thought before he had spoken, as her glittering blue eyes indicated she had been baiting him. "These herbs are all effective?" he asked. "They will see the job done?"

As instantly as the light appeared in her eyes, it was extinguished again as they darkened beneath the ridge of her brow. "They are poisons. Effective at killing the babe, yes. And almost as often the mother, too, if not administered just so."

_"My bear, your own lady wife _died_ trying to give you an heir!" _

The thought of holding Daenerys' hand, feeling her grasp grow weaker and watching her hand go whiter in his as Erena's had when she bled aware their babe and her life, did give Jorah pause. But when he weighed the possibility of her death by miscarriage against the certainty of it when Khal Drogo inevitably learned of her condition...As he would do, for certain, when she began to show, if not sooner; if her sickness continued, her handmaids would surely guess, and even if they did not gossip with the other women in the _khalasar _or do something so audacious as tell the _khal _themselves, there was also her mad jealous brother's serpentine tongue.

"Why is it so difficult for you idiot men to remember to _pull out?" _the herbalist's interrupted his thoughts. "Or to keep your cocks laced safe inside your breeches and save everyone the trouble?"

"Believe me, woman, I have been asking myself the same question."

"And so I ask you again now: what will you buy, my careless knight?"

Jorah caught his breath, eyes sweeping the bundles of dried herbs hanging across the top of the stall, and uttered his request before he could change his mind.


End file.
